UN DESA provides a unique global platform that brings government and non-government stakeholders together to harness the power of accelerated digitalisation, technology and data for sustainable development. UN DESA shapes dialogue on forward-looking resilience and preparedness issues in key global policy areas. The Department is the institutional home for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multi-stakeholder policy forum, that is actively promoting discussion on information and good practices to inform public policy related to the governance of the internet. The multi-stakeholder Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) engages thousands of members from the scientific and technological communities, to facilitate sharing of best practices, experience and policy advice for Member States.

Through its support to the Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), the Department helps countries to leverage opportunities to leapfrog development, combat corruption, reduce inequalities and improve state-citizen relations. UN DESA recognises that information in the digital age remains a boon and could be harnessed for good during crises, but also signposts the dangers of digital and information technologies which could impact our common future. In August 2022, responding to a request from the General Assembly in its resolution of December 2021, the Secretary-General released his Countering Disinformation report. The report paves the way for continued support by UN DESA to its Member States on building their capacities and preparedness for more robust digital government.

UN DESA works with Member States to assess the state of global e-governance and offer best practices for improving the ways people interact with different parts of their government, incorporating new tools and innovation. As countries build forward from the pandemic, governments are faced with policy trade-offs in how they choose to progress e-government and digital transformation for the benefit of their citizens. The biennial UN E-Government Survey – the only global report of its kind - has firmly established itself as a leading benchmarking reference on e-government, and as a policy tool for decision makers. The publicly available survey results present comparative ranking of e-government performance across 193 United Nations Member States measured by an e-government development index (EGDI) which includes assessment of the provision of online services, telecommunication connectivity, and human capacity. Policy makers particularly value the survey results as it provides information that enables them to identify areas of strengths and challenges in e-government, as well as suggested options for future policy action in a rapidly changing digital world. Member States consider the survey as a useful resource to learn from experiences and best practices of other countries.

UN DESA’s analytical work provide messages for policy makers to build a resilient future and continue to serve as references for future unanticipated crises. “Policy Brief No. 92: Leveraging Digital Technologies for Social Inclusion” brings new insights into the impact of COVID-19 on digital transformation by emphasizing the need to leave no one offline as a vital element of leaving no one behind. “Policy Brief No. 113: Digitally Enabled New Forms of Work and Policy Implications for Labour Regulation Frameworks and Social Protection Systems” highlights how digital transformation is enabling new forms of work and new ways of organizing work – such as e-commerce and virtual transactions - and the risks that this brings for many workers.

Alongside other analysis work, the briefs continue to serve as inputs to policy discussions at international and national levels. In determining their digital transition growth pathways, countries need to consider a balanced approach to public service delivery and communication that serves both the digitally connected and those that are unable to access e-government services. This will help to ensure a just, inclusive, people-centred and rights-based digital transformation.

The Department considers future threats to public administration, including the threat of cybercrime, data leaks and unregulated information, and cyberattacks – malicious manipulation of data systems. UN DESA’s policy briefs highlight these concerns and offer policy options. For example, “Policy Brief No. 89: Strengthening Data Governance for Effective Use of Open Data and Big Data Analytics for Combating COVID-19” recognizes the increasing concerns in data privacy and security that could jeopardize public trust in data collection, use and dissemination. It recommends the need for strengthening all aspects of data governance including data collection, data partnership, data analysis, data dissemination, and protection of data privacy and data security. It also calls for a holistic, whole-of government approach to data governance to build public trust, support institutional coordination, and streamline government operations as a whole.

UN DESA, as a member of the Partnership on Measuring Information and Communication Technology for Development, has contributed to developing a core list of ICT indicators to help countries track ICT infrastructure, access, and measure ICTs across various sectors. This list, regularly revised and endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission, includes e-government indicators collected by UN DESA based on the United Nations E-Government Survey methodology. In 2021, three new indicators were added to the core list: the presence of a national e-government strategy, digital identity for online services, and a public procurement portal. Additionally, UN DESA constructs an e-participation index and a local online service index, using features from the E-Government Survey, to assess online services provided by local governments and cities. These efforts contribute to a comprehensive understanding of e-government development at both national and local levels.

The Department has played a crucial role in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process since 2005, co-facilitating the annual WSIS Forum alongside other UN agencies. This platform promotes multi-stakeholder implementation of action lines and cross-cutting commitments, addressing ICT’s role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. UN DESA, through its Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG), serves as a facilitator for the implementation of and follow-up to the action lines: C1 - The role of public governance authorities and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development, C7 - ICT Applications: E-government and C11 - International and regional cooperation

UN DESA’s technical assistance helps small island developing States (SIDS) and least-developed countries (LDCs), particularly those in Africa, build long-term institutional capacities to govern data and implement e-government policies and strategies. The project “Developing institutional capacities for digital data management and cooperation to advance progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals” (March 2022 – February 2025) supports 17 countries including African countries, SIDS, and LDCs to address existing challenges and gaps in digital data management and cooperation, focusing on enhancing the institutional capacities of countries to utilize, manage and govern data in a comprehensive, objective and evidence-based manner, through regional and global cooperation. The project “Building institutional capacity for evidence- and data-based e-government policies in support of the Sustainable Development Goals” in Bangladesh and Ethiopia (1 July 2016 – 31 December 2019) supported decision making for the 2030 Agenda by building institutional capacity in both countries to collect, analyse, and use data on e-government. It also focused on strengthening institutional capacity, frameworks and approaches in both countries to implement e-government policies and strategies in support of selected SDGs and targets.

UN DESA helps Member States understand the potential of frontier technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other automation technologies to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. The Department has broken new ground with the development of an innovative tool that uses artificial intelligence to help countries quantify and model for the future, nature’s contributions to their economic prosperity and well-being. Since the launch of the tool in 2021, countries are increasingly using the Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES) platform in applying a new international standard for natural capital accounting – the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Ecosystem Accounting. The ecosystem accounts will help countries to track the extent, condition and services provided by their national ecosystems – such as forests and wetlands – in the form of physical and monetary accounts and indicators.

The Department assists Member States to leverage new technologies to tackle future risks. Its “Policy Brief No: 123: Sandboxing and Experimenting Digital Technologies for Sustainable Development” highlights the value of regulatory sandboxes for governments to safely experiment with newer digital technologies and innovation outside their existing policy space and regulatory framework. Sandboxes could therefore lower the costs of innovation and allow policymakers to gain important foresight, before any decision-making. UN DESA, in partnership with United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), is implementing the Frontier Technology Policy Experimentation and Regulatory Sandboxes project from January 2021 - December 2024 in three focus countries of Bangladesh (LDC), Kazakhstan (LLDC) and the Maldives (SIDS). Its main objective is to enhance the institutional capacity of selected countries in special situations and to conceptualize, develop and implement policy experimentation and/or regulatory sandboxes on new technologies, as an innovative and catalytic approach to increase resilience and accelerate the progress of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The project is also working towards enhanced global and regional cooperation on policy experimentation and regulatory sandboxes in new technologies, for possible scale-up and replication in other countries.

UN DESA is helping to build trust in public institutions by facilitating development, access to and use of quality data. Mandated by the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD), the Department has developed the United Nations Global Platform*, which facilitates an ecosystem that supports international collaboration and harnesses the strength of data scientists across the world in the development of Official Statistics using new data sources and innovative methods. Demand for access to the tools, data and methods has dramatically increased for use at local, national and global levels. To facilitate ease of access, the UN Global Platform has established four physical regional hubs in China, Rwanda, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates, which work together to educate, collaborate and develop new technologies to work with new Big Data sources and methodologies. Through international collaboration, the Platform is building a library of trusted statistical methods and algorithms, and the Cloud services enable members of any international organisation to share and utilise the same algorithms. Over time, as this common platform of collaborative and trusted work by data scientists grows, it is expected to reduce additional effort to develop new methodologies elsewhere in the world.

The Department is using the digital revolution to strengthen global capacity to harness, access and use global data as an important aspect in monitoring the SDGs and as an input into decision making. Digitalisation has given impetus to the data revolution, particularly in speed of accessing data, increasing availability of big data, open data and real-time data that that are bringing new insights, and the availability of predictive modelling and presentational tools. The Department is valued for the wide range of digital capacity and skills strengthening resources in the public sector workforce and for political leaders. Notably resources from UN DESA’s Digital Learning Centre (DLC) are widely accessed by government and non-government actors. This curated repository of the Department’s digital capacity-building work is valued by stakeholders as it offers self-paced courses and microlearning through an e-learning platform that is publicly accessible, focused on the latest knowledge for implementing the SDGs. As the only internet-based network of its type in the world, the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN) promotes the global sharing of knowledge and innovative practices on governance and public administration issues, especially focused on helping countries in special situations to implement the 2030 Agenda.

UN DESA’s training and capacity building initiatives are contributing to positive change. The emphasis on often overlooked aspects of capacity building, namely building e-government leadership, promoting a whole-of-government approach, are bringing immediate dividends and helping countries to invest in building future talent pools. In Bangladesh, UN DESA technical assistance to the “Digital Bangladesh” national strategy focuses on areas of capacity development, market access and financial access of the cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises, which form the backbone of the economy. Kazakhstan is in the process of developing an international technopark of IT startups, and UN DESA’s support to a regulatory sandbox for autonomous vehicles in public transport is helping Kazakhstan in achieving three broader goals of decentralization, digitalization, and decarbonization in the energy sector.

*UN Global Platform is a cloud-service environment supporting international collaboration among all countries in the world by sharing scientific knowledge, data, methods and technology.

Following a capacity-building workshop on “Adopting New Approaches to E-Government for SDG Implementation,” organized by UN DESA, the participants from D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, comprising Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey, agreed to create an e-government network or working group to be supported by the D-8 Secretariat. The Training of Trainers (ToT) on the UN DESA Curriculum on Governance for the SDGs Toolkit on Innovation and Digital Government for Public Service Delivery built a pool of competent trainers from public administration schools and institutes of training from countries of the Asia and the Pacific region, including from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The institutions are now equipped to train their civil servants and build the knowledge and skills of future generations on these topics.

UN DESA deploys online e-government tools to improve public service delivery through two institutional levels: national and local e-government toolkits. The National E-government Toolkit guides central authorities on country-wide frameworks, technology, and citizen participation, while the Local E-government Toolkit focuses on municipal service provision, community engagement, and city-level digital transformation. Both include guides, case studies, and practical instruments to enhance policymakers’ skills in delivering efficient, inclusive online services. They emphasize e-government literacy and link digital governance to the SDGs. This dual-level approach ensures wide e-government benefits, with the national toolkit setting overarching policies and the local toolkit aiding implementation, promoting cohesive digital transformation from federal to local levels.